PRIMITIVES & EXTROPIANS

The anarcho-primitivists have backed themselves into a situation
where they can never be satisfied without the total dissolution
of the totality. Luddism as a tactic has much to recommend it:
-on the local level, machine-smashing can actually accomplish
something. Even one or two nuclear reactors have been shut down
by "sabotage" (legal, political, or actual) -and one
can always gain at least a moment of satisfaction with a wooden
shoe or a monkey wrench. On a "global" level however
-the "strategic" level- the totality of the neo-primitive
critique of the totality itself begins to take on a disturbing
air of-totalitarianism. This can be seen most clearly in certain
strains of "deep" ecology and "ecofascism,"
but it remains an inherent problem even in the most "left-wing"
strains of primitivism. The puritan impulse-purification, the
realization of purity -imparts a certain rigidity and Aggression
to all possible actions on behalf of such a total critique.
This must seem especially the case when the critique extends
beyond, say, urban civilization (or "History") into
the "prehistoric" realm of art, music, techné,
language, and symbolic mediation itself. Short of some hypothetically
"natural" evolution (or devolution) of the very species,
how precisely is such purity to be attained? Primitivism
in effect has proposed an absolute category -the "primitive"
itself-which assumes the function of a metaphysical principle.
Of course the primitive in its "true essence" remains
beyond definition (beyond symbolic mediation), but until mediation
itself is abolished, the primitive must assume (in relation to
all other possible totalities) the philosophical trappings of
an imperative, and even of "doctrine." This brings us
perilously close to the notorious violence of the sacred. The
deepest of this violence is directed at the self, since the reification
of the eschaton (either in the future or the past) precisely devalues
the present, the "place" where we are actually living
our everyday lives. But invariably the violence must be directed
outwardly as well. Fine, you say: -let the shit come down. Yet
the successful resolution of the violence (i.e., the total abolition
of symbolic mediation) can logically be defined only by a presumptive
vanguard of the "pure." The principle of hierarchy has
thus reappeared -but hierarchy contradicts the initial premises
of primitivism. This, I believe, can be called a tragic contradiction.
On the level of the individual and of everyday life such a contradiction
can only manifest as ineffectuality and bitterness.

By contrast, the anarcho-Extropian or futurians are also forced
to reify the eschaton -since the present is obviously not the
utopia of techné they envision- by placing perfection
in a future where symbolic mediation has abolished hierarchy,
rather than in a past where such mediation has not yet appeared
(the ideal Paleolithic of the primitivists). Obviously for the
Extropians, mediation per se cannot be defined as "impurity"
or as the invariable source of separation, alienation, and hierarchy.
Nevertheless, it remains obvious that such separation does in
fact occur, that it amounts to immiseration, that it is bound
up in some way with techné and mediation, that not
all technology is "liberating" according to any anarchist
definition of the term, and that some of it is downright oppressive.
The Extropian therefore lacks and needs a critique of technology,
and of the incredibly complex relation between the social and
the technical. No one with any intelligence can any longer accept
the notion of technology as "morally neutral," with
control of the means of production the only criteria for valuation.
The social and the technological are somehow bound in a complex
relation of co-creation (or "co-evolution"), such that
techné shapes cognition even as cognition shapes
techné. If the extropian vision of the future is
viable it cannot depend on "machine evolution" alone
to achieve realization. But unless anarcho-futurism can develop
a critique of technology, it is relegated precisely to this passive
role. Invariably a dialectic of "good" machines and
"evil" machines is developed, or rather of good and
evil modes of social-technological relations. This rather manichaean
worldview however fails to efiminate or even plaster over the
contradictions which arise from such premises, and which revolve
around the "bad-fit" between human values and machine
"logic," human autonomy and machine autonomy. As M.
de Landa pints out, the autonomous machine derives from and defines
the war machine (Taylor developed "Taylorism" while
working in an arsenal). Extropianism has marked "cyberspace"
as the area of struggle for "good" human/machine relations
(e.g., the Internet), and this struggle has taken on the aspect
of a resistance against the "militarization" of cyberspace,
its hierarchization as an "Information Highway" under
centralized management. But what if cyberspace itself is by definition
a mode of separation and a manifestation of "machine logic"?
What if the disembodiment inherent in any appearance within
cyberspace amounts to an alienation from precisely that sphere
of everyday life which extropianism hopes to transform and purge
of its miseries? If this were so, the results might very well
resemble the dystopian situations envisioned by P.K. Dick and
W. Gibson; -turned inward, this violent sense of contradiction
would evoke the kind of futility and melancholia these writers
depict. Directed outward, the violence would conjure up other
SciFi models such as those of R. Heinlein or F. Herbert, which
equate "freedom" with the culture of a technological
elite.

Now, when I talk about "the return of the Paleolithic"
I find myself leaning toward the primitivist position -and have
consequently been criticized by extropians for luddoid reaction,
nostalgism, and technophobia. However, when I talk about (say)
the potential use of the Internet in organizing a TAZ, I begin
to tilt a little toward my old SciFi enthusiasms and sound a bit
like an extropian-and have consequently been criticized by primitivists
for being "soft on technology" (like some sort of melting
watch by Dali), seduced by techno-optimism, by the illusion that
separation can overcome separation.

Both these criticisms are correct to some degree, inasmuch
as my inconsistency results from an attempt to think about techné
and society without any recourse to an inviolate system of
absolute categories. On the one hand, most of my thinking about
technology was shaped by the radical ad-hoc-ism and bricolage
theory of the '60s and '70s, the "appropriate tech"
movement, which accepts the de facto link between techné
and human society, but looks for appropriate ways to shape
situations toward low-cost/maximal-pleasure tendencies. In fiction
a model is attempted by B. Sterling in his short-story "Green
Days in Brunei," a brilliant imagining of low-tech non-authoritarian
solutions to "3rd world" over-population and poverty.
In "real" life a smaller but most exquisite model is
provided by the New Alchemy Institute, which turns polluted sinkholes
into arcadian springs with low green technologies in cheap installations
which are aesthetically beautiful. On the other hand, I prefer
the burden of inconsistency (even "foolish" inconsistency)
to the burden of the Absolute. Only an impure theory can do justice
to the impurity of the present -which,as everyone
knows, is only a psychological impossibility caught between a
lost past and a nonexistent future. "Everyday life"
is not a category -even "the body" is not a category.
Life -and the body- are "full of holes," permeable,
grotesque -ad hoc constructions already compromised with an impure
empiricism, fated to "drift," to "relativism,"
and to the sheer messiness of the organic. And yet it is "precisely"
here, in this imprecise area of contradiction and "vulgar
existentialism," that the creative act of autonomy and self-actualization
must be accomplished. Critiques can be directed at the past or
future, but praxis can only occur in the impure and ontologically
unstable here-and-now. I don't want to abandon the critique of
past-and-future-in fact I need it, in the form of a utopian
poetics, in order to situate praxis in the context of a tradition
(of festivity and of resistance) and of an anti-tradition (of
utopian "hope"). But I cannot allow this critique to
harden into an eschatology. I ask of theory that it remain flexible
in, regard to situations, and able to define values in
terms of "the struggle for empirical freedoms" (as one
modern-day Zapatista put it). "Revolution" no less
than Religion has been guilty of promising "pie in the sky"
(as Joe Hill put it) -but the real problem of theory is (as Alice
put it) "jam today." The concept of the TAZ
was never intended as an abandonment of past or future -the TAZ-
existed, and will exist -but rather as a means to maximize autonomy
and pleasure for as many individuals and groups as possible as
soon as possible -even here and now. The TAZ exists -thepurpose of the theory has been simply to notice it, help it
to define itself, become "politically conscious." The
past and future help us to know our "true" (revolutionary)
desires but only the present can realize them -only the living
body, for all its grotesque imperfection.

Suppose we were to ask -as anarchists- what should be done about
the problem of technology "after the revolution." This
exercise in utopian poetics may help us to clarify the question
of desire, and of praxis in the "present." The primitivist
might argue that there can be no revolution without the abolition
of symbolic mediation, or at least of the technological imperative;
extropians might say that no revolution can occur without technological
transcendence. But both parties must perforce admit a transitional
stage, when de facto power has been seized by the "Revolution,"
but the full unfolding of revolutionary society has yet to occur.
Let's imagine that the one rough principle agreed upon by "everyone"
is the freedom of the individual from coercion by the group, and
the freedom of the (self-organized) group from coercion by all
other groups. The only "price" of this freedom is that
it damage no other free and autonomous interests. This would
seem to be a minimalistic but adequate definition of basic anarchism.
At this point the primitivist may hold that the dialectic of
freedom moves irrevocably toward the re-appearance of the Paleolithic,
albeit at a "higher" and more conscious level than the
first time around, since this re-appearance will have been announced
by revolution, by consciousness. Similarly at this point the
extropian may argue that the further unfolding of freedom can
only be envisioned as self-directed evolution through the co-creation
of humanity and its technology. Fine and dandy. But now what?
Are these two anarchist tendencies going to become armies and
fight it out to the last recalcitrant computer jock or neo-wild-man?
Are they going to force their visions of the future on each other?
Would such action be consistent with the basic anarchist premise
of -mutual non-coercion? Or would it reveal each of these tendencies
to be flawed by destructive and tragic contradictions?

I've said before that in such a situation, the problem of technology
can be solved only by the principle of revolutionary, desire.
Since we've "ruled out" coercion of all those who accept
the premise of mutual non-coercion, all competing models of utopia
are submitted to the crucible of desire. How much do I want
a computer? I can't force Taiwanese and Mexican women to
make silicon chips for slave wages. I can't pollute other peoples'
air with some outrageous plastic factory to make consoles. I'm
free to have a computer, but I must meet the price-mutual non-coercion.
Or -how much do I want the wilderness? Ican't
force people to get out of "my" forest now because it's
also "their" forest. I can do what I want with "my
share" of the forest, but only at the agreed-upon price.
If my neighbors desire to plant wheat, or hand-craft fine computers,
so long as they respect my "Nature" I must respect their
"Culture." Of course we may wrangle about "acceptable
emission standards" or forest preservation -about the appropriateness
of a given technological or non-technological "solution"
in a given situation -but we will accept the price of mutual non-coercion
in the form of mess and compromise, impurity and imperfection
-because "empirical freedoms" are worth more to us than
categorical imperatives.

Of course, everyone is free to play this game of utopian poetics
with different "rules," and different results. After
all, the future does not exist. However, I would like to push
the implications of my thought-experiment a bit further. I suspect
that this "utopia" would prove disappointing to both
the primitives and the extropians. I suspect that a workable
utopia would adhere more closely to the "messy" model
than to either of the "pure" models of the pro-tech/anti-tech
theorists. Like bolo'bolo, Iimagine a complex multiplicity
of social models co-existing under the voluntary aegis of the
social "price" of mutual non-coercion. In effect the
primitivists will get less wilderness than they demand, and the
extropians will get less tech. Nevertheless, all but the most
fanatical extremists on either side will be reconciled to the
messy utopia of desire or so I predict -because it will be organized
around pleasure and surplus, rather than the denial and scarcity
expressed by the totality. The desire for wilderness will be
gratified at a level undreamed since the early Neolithic, and
the desire for creativity and even co-creation will be gratified
at a level undreamed by the wildest science fiction.In
both cases the means for this enjoyment can only be called appropriate
techné -green,low energy, high information.
I don't believe in the abolition of symbolic mediation, and I
don't believe that separation can overcome separation. But I
do hypothesize the possibility of amuch more immediate
and satisfactory experience of creation and conviviality through
the human (animal/animate) scaling of economy and technology -and
this, however untidy, I would call utopia.

If I have disagreed with both primitives and extropians here,
it was not to reject them as allies. The only useful purpose
served by our "after the Revolution" game is to shed
light on our present situation, and our possible options for concrete
action here and now (more or less). It seems to me that both
the P's and E's are quite capable of grasping the theory of "messiness"
and the "impure" model of the TAZ. A night, a week,
a month of relative autonomy, relative satisfaction, relative
realization, would be worth far more to most anarchists than a
whole lifetime of absolute bitterness, resentment, and nostalgia
for the past or future. The most enthusiastic cyberpunk can still
embrace the "festal body," and the most savage primitives
have been known to succumb to civilized impurities such as beer,
or art. I fear that a few diehards in both camps will still sneer
at our enjoyment -of the impure TAZ or the impure uprising- because
it falls short of the perfect revolution. But realization arises
only from direct experience, from participation. They themselves
admit this. And yet action is always impure, always incomplete.
Are they too fastidious? Will nothing suit them both besides
the void-wither of wilderness, or of cyberspace? Are they dandies
of the Absolute?

The TAZ project is one of indiscriminate syncretism, not of exclusion.
By disagreeing with both parties we are attempting to reconcile
them -at least pro tem- to a sort of "united front"
or ad hoc tendency, determined to experiment now with various
modes of contestation as well as enjoyment, of struggle as well
as celebration. The palimpsest of all utopian theories and desires
-including all redundancies and repetitions- forms the matrix
of an anti-authoritarian movement capable of "lumping together"
the mess of anarchist, libertarian, syndicalist, council communist,
post-situationist, primitivist, extropian and other "free"
tendencies. This "union"-without-uniformity will not
be driven (or riven) by ideology, but by a kind of insurrectionary
"noise" or chaos of TAZ'S, uprisings, refusals, and
epiphanies. Into the "final"totality of global
capital it will release a hundred blooming flowers, a thousand,
a million memes of resistance, of difference, of non-ordinary
consciousness -the will to power as "strangeness." And
as capital retreats deeper and deeper into cyberspace, or into
disembodiment, leaving behind itself the empty shells of spectacular
control, our complexity of anti-authoritarian and autonomist tendencies
will begin to see the re-appearance of the Social.

But at this present moment the TAZ (in its broadest possible sense)
seems to be the only manifestation of the possibility of radical
conviviality. Every non-authoritarian tendency should support
the TAZ because only there (aside from the imagination) can an
authentic taste of life without oppression be experienced. The
vital question now concerns the "technology" of the
TAZ, i.e., the means for potentiating and manifesting it most
clearly and strongly. Compared to this question, the problems
of technology (or of zero-technology) take on an air of theological
debate -a ghostly and querulous other- worldliness. My critics
have a point -but it's aimed somewhere about 10,000 years in the
past, or "fiveminutes into the future," and
misses the mark.

Imust admit that my own taste inclines neither toward
Wilderness World nor spaceship Earth as exclusive categories.
I actually spend far more time defending wildness than "civilization,"
because it is far more threatened. I yearn for the re-appearance
of Nature out of Culture-but not for the eradication of all symbolic
mediation. The word "choice" has been so devalued lately.
Let's say I'd prefer a world of indeterminacy, of rich ambiguity,
of complex impurities. My critics, apparently, do not. I find
much to admire and desire in both their models, but can't for
even a moment believe ineither of them as totalities.
Their futurity or eschatology bores me, unless I can mix it into
the stew of the TAZ -or use it to magic the TAZ into active existence-
to tease the TAZ into action. The TAZ is "broad-minded"
enough to entertain more than two, or even six, impossible ideas
"before breakfast." The TAZ is always "bigger"
than the mere ideas which inspire it. Even at its smallest and
most intimate the TAZ englobes all "totalities," and
packs them into the same kaleidoscope conceptual space, the "imaginal
world" which is always so closely related to the TAZ, and
which burns with the same fire. My brain may not be able to reconcile
the wilderness and cyberspace, but the TAZ can do so - in fact,
has already done so. And yet the TAZ is no totality, but merely
a leaky sieve-which, in the fairy tale, can carry milk or even
become a boat. For the TAZ, technology is like that paper fan
in the Zen story, which first becomes a "fan," then
a device for scooping cake, and finally a silent breeze.